People Watching: A Novel: A Fall Romance - Softcover

Bonam-Young, Hannah

Softcover

ISBN 10: 059387188X ISBN 13: 9780593871881

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this sexy and emotional romance from the acclaimed author of Out of the Woods and Out on a Limb, a small-town woman’s journey to spread her wings intertwines with the arrival of an adventurous newcomer who brings out the best in her.

Prudence Welch has found solace in her introverted life in Baysville, a charming tourist town in Northern Ontario. Despite once dreaming of a life beyond its borders, she now finds contentment in her routines: working at her father’s gas station, writing poetry, and caring for her mother, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease shortly after Prue’s nineteenth birthday. But as her mother’s condition worsens and her father’s concerns about her own future intensify, Prue feels her world slipping further out of control.

Enter Milo Kablukov, an enigmatic wanderer whose beat-up van covered with ill-advised bumper stickers rolls into town just when Prue needs a change. It’s all too easy to let go with him, and Prue can’t help but strike up an unlikely friendship with Milo, which leads to a wild and sexy agreement between them.

Milo, a man of many adventures and countless stories, is not one to settle down. However, his brother’s urgent need for help has brought him to Baysville, and now the intriguing Prue has given him more reason to stay—especially once they start spending more time together, their chemistry intensifying, and casual-sex lessons begin at Prue’s request.

But as their temporary arrangement blossoms into something deeper, Prue and Milo discover that getting out of their comfort zones is one thing . . . taking that leap together is something else entirely.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hannah Bonam-Young

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

One

Milo

“Please, Bertha, baby, I am begging you,” I say, tightening my hands around the shuddering steering wheel. There’s not another living soul in sight. No one to witness our inevitable crash and burn if Bertha decides to call it quits and send us rolling backward down the hill. On this Muskoka backroad it’s just me, Bertha, the black tar pavement under us, the gray storm clouds above us, the granite outcropping bordering either side of the road, and, as always, the bobblehead Jesus on my dash.

“I swear to everything good and holy that if you make it over this hill, I’ll never ask you for anything ever again.” She sputters, and I grit my teeth waiting for the backward roll. “If we make it to town,” I plead, each syllable equal parts pathetic and desperate, “I’ll fill you up with premium fuel and let you rest for a week.” The tires jolt, forcing my hands on the wheel to fight for control. “Okay, okay! Two weeks. I promise.”

My beloved van’s speedometer is broken, as is most of her, but the temperature gauge isn’t, unfortunately. The needle is fluctuating between you’re beyond f***ed and are you on fire yet?

“C’mon, old girl, don’t quit on me now. Not yet. Don’t you want to go home again?” Though I cannot help but think that my death would probably save me from this familial obligation. Maybe Bertha is taking care of me, just as she has for the past decade, and death is the lesser of these two evils.

The sound of metal grinding against metal, an irritating high-­pitched squealing, is her answer. Then, the choking of an engine, like the mechanical equivalent of a smoker’s cough, which is never a good sign. I prepare my final words, taking a deep breath as the car slows to a stop a few feet shy of the top of the hill.

Well, this is it, I think to myself. I wonder what my obituary will read, if anyone bothers to write one. If it was up to me it would say: Milo Kablukov, 28, was a nomadic slut, childhood sheep farmer, and wannabe artist with a heart of gold and a penis that launched a thousand ships.

Just as I’m about to say my final goodbyes to this mortal plane, Bertha kicks back to life, taking us over the edge of the hilltop and onto flattened road. I open my eyes, having closed them while bracing for disaster.

“Whew, baby!” I shake my limbs free of tension as I adjust position in my seat and toss back my hair. “You little tease,” I say, petting the dashboard. I make a turn onto a backroad toward the train station with a flat palm on the wheel and slow my speed to give Bertha a rest. “You really had my heart racing that time, gorgeous,” I tell her, releasing the last of my tension in a languid breath.

Other than my younger sister, Nadia, Bertha has been the only consistent woman in my life since I got the f*** out of my hometown of Dorset, Ontario, the day after my eighteenth birthday. The town slogan, if it were up to me, would be: Dorset: Where the sheep outnumber the people.

I won’t be returning there any time soon. My brother, my summoner, has set up home a few towns over. Somewhere just as boring, no doubt, but far enough away from Sonia and Andrei Kablukov—­good old Mom and Pop—­that my brother would even dare to ask Nadia and me to come to his rescue.

I pull up in front of the small white building that is technically a train station but looks more like an old cottage. “There she is!” I shout as I wheel the passenger window all the way down. “Nadia motherf***in’ Kablukov in the flesh!”

My sister, who perpetually chews gum on one side of her mouth, smirks as she rolls her eyes. “You’re late.” She leans into the window, tapping the inside of the passenger door. “Hi, Bertha baby, you’re looking as shitty as ever.”

“You look older again,” I point out, scowling at her. “You should really stop doing that.”

“Aging?” she clarifies.

I nod.

“Charming . . .” She assesses me, or at least what she can see of me from the window, with a curious, wry grin.

I look her over too, in the habitual, almost subconscious way I always have. Searching for the scrapes, burns, and bruises, and hoping to find none. Nadia has always been equal parts stubborn and prideful, discontent to be the youngest of us three siblings. Which meant she got hurt trying to do things above her paygrade a lot.

At four, she tried to make her own breakfast, and I helped ice the burn from her run-­in with the frying pan. At nine, she climbed up to the roof to fix the TV antenna, and I fixed the eaves trough she broke on her way down and bandaged up her ankle. At twelve, she tried to teach herself to drive Dad’s tractor, and I mended the broken fence and her hand from the splinter she’d gotten trying to repair it herself. Then, there were all the many nights that she’d sneak into my room when Mom and Dad were screaming at each other, and I’d let her pretend it was for my sake, not hers.

Now, instead of looking for scraped-­up limbs, I look at her eyes. I try and judge how much weight they’re holding. I attempt to measure the dark circles underneath as if they were rings on a tree stump, as if age and sleepless nights could be measured in the same way.

Nadia’s hair is back to its original black color and rests just above her jaw in a straight, sharp line. She’s gained some weight back, which I’m relieved to notice, but not enough. She was way, way too thin for a while there. She joked that she was too busy to eat all the while finding the time to smoke her way through a pack of cigarettes a day.

I’m not judging—­all three of us siblings have our vices, our own unhealthy way of surviving our f***ed-­up childhood—­I just hated seeing her look weak when she is far, far from it.

So maybe it’s her hair, or the extra few pounds she’s gained back, or the fewer rings under her eyes, or the less jittery way that she stands on the curb allowing me the chance to look her over—­but she does look older. It settles me and somehow makes me uneasy at the same time. She’s doing better, but I didn’t know that until now. And when was the last time I had asked my little sister how life was treating her?

I need to be better at asking.

“You look great, зайка.” Зайка, or bunny in Russian, is what Nik, our older brother, started calling Nadia from birth. She had these huge, chubby cheeks as a baby that reminded him of his favorite animal at the time; the ones he’d sneak food to that lived under my parents’ barn. “You just look different, that’s all.”

“Well . . . You were gone a long time. Again,” she replies, quirking an arched brow.

I unbuckle the seatbelt, but don’t turn off the engine before getting out of the driver’s seat. Truthfully, I don’t know if I could get Bertha to start back up again and there’s no way I could afford to get a tow truck.

“Get over here,” I request, opening my arms wide for her as I approach. Nadia, stiff as a board, welcomes my hug in a literal sense by stepping toward me, but keeps her arms firmly at her sides. “I missed you,” I say over the top of her head. She mumbles something that sounds like uh-­huh into my chest. I squeeze tighter before releasing her.

I...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 059387188X
• ISBN 13: 9780593871881
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 353
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland